SEARING DRAMA DISGRACED SPARKS REAL, RAW EMOTIONS
It’s been a long time since I’ve witnessed the kind of collective silences that Alberta Theatre Projects’ production of Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced elicits from audiences.
From director Nigel Shawn Williams’ precise staging to the blistering performances of its superb ensemble cast, this Disgraced is real, raw and uncompromising. It’s a series of unexpected sucker punches that often leave the viewer dumbfounded.
Like any human experience, Disgraced is funny, tragic, angry and unnerving. This is a play with themes, characters and bits of dialogue that will linger long after it ends.
Upwardly mobile, mixed-race couple Amir (Shawn Lall) and Emily (Sasha Barry) have a luxurious apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He’s a lawyer and she’s an artist. The irony is her paintings embrace Islam, the heritage he has rejected. He’s trying to be more Caucasian than she is.
The audience is invited to observe a dinner party Emily and Amir throw for Isaac (Tyrell Crews), a Jewish art curator interested in Emily’s paintings, and Isaac’s wife Jory (Samantha Walkes), an African-american lawyer at Amir’s firm. Not at the party but a catalyst to the rage that will be unleashed is Amir’s nephew Abe (Hamed Dar).
Williams has cast five incredibly beautiful people in these roles, but in a short, searing 80 minutes, he and his actors give us glimpses of the dark recesses of their souls. We get to see what they really believe and the prejudices they harbour.
They drink too much too quickly, and during the salad course, Amir begins detailing why Islam isn’t a good fit for the modern world.
Isaac and Emily try to counter his points, which unleashes a tirade of pent-up hostilities on everyone’s behalf.
Though all the actors eventually shatter their characters’ facades, it’s Lall who is left most vulnerable, emotionally naked and shattered. It’s such an honest, unflinching performance that it’s difficult not to feel twinges of sympathy for him, despite his actions and vitriolic comments.
Barry initially plays Emily as cool and confident, so it’s disheartening to watch her become glacial and wavering. Barry never lets Emily become a shell of her former self, but it’s clear she’s a broken, wounded person.
There’s a nice level of righteous arrogance to Crews’ Isaac from the way he evaluates Emily’s paintings to his criticism of Israeli politics. Watching him lose his control is scary, especially with his character’s final exit line, one of the most blistering in the play.
Walkes is all haughty elegance, but the real tigress is revealed when she feels slighted and wants the others to feel more hurt than she does. There’s a frightening level of spite in her grand exit.
Dar shows us the rebellious spirit in the youthful Abe as, in his mind, he goes from crusader to victim. He’s the antithesis of his uncle because he wants to preserve his heritage, even under his facade of being fully Americanized.
Williams’ direction is meticulous. He allows the tension to build slowly by emphasizing the humour early in the script, but opens the emotional floodgates when the characters are most vulnerable. The way he has choreographed the scene changes to show passage of time is beautifully theatrical.
Disgraced is not an easy play to sit through. The more emotionally savage it becomes, the more it asks us to look inward, rather than at the failings of its characters.